Scots bra tycoon Michelle Mone reveals all in sensational new book

IN her no holds barred book, My Fight to the Top, Michelle recounts how she’s battled everything and everyone from would-be sex offenders to corrupt business partners.

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Yui Mok/PA Wire

Michelle Mone

MICHELLE Mone, 43, the brains and beauty behind world famous lingerie brand Ultimo, is one of Scotland’s wealthiest and most successful women, but her explosive new rags-to-riches autobiography reveals a darker side to her charmed life.

In the no holds barred book, aptly named ‘My Fight to the Top’, the Gallowgate gal candidly recounts how she’s battled everything and everyone from would-be sex offenders to corrupt business partners.

“I don’t have any regrets in life,” Michelle told us honestly during an interview at her palatial Thames-fronted penthouse.

“I think even through all the hard, terrible, lonely, awful times you should never regret anything in life: that has made me the person that I am today.

"Even after the toughest lessons of losing all the money, or my husband going off with my designer, I wouldn’t be here today, I wouldn’t have the life I’ve got today, and everything happens for a reason.”

As well as divulging how she overcame physical and emotional traumas while struggling with financial difficulties, raising a young family, battling with her weight and running a global business, Michelle also explains how she netted her handsome £50million empire.

“You don’t get anywhere in life by not working hard. In the book I talk about how I want to one day wake up and be in a place by the water and look, I moved in here two weeks ago,” she smiles, gesturing to her glamorous new Thames-side home.

“I love it. You don’t get this by lying in your bed, having duvet days.

“I’ve never had a day off sick in my life,” she says earnestly. “People get sick but people make an effort.

"I got that attitude from my Granddad in Glasgow’s East End. He had three jobs; one was fixing the slate on the roof.

"Even if it was snowing and his life was at risk he was still up on that roof. So I was always taught to work hard and not take sick days.”

Recently the sassy Scot publicly endured a hate campaign created by an army of twitter trolls criticising her anti-independence stance in the recent referendum, but true to form she says she has no regrets.

“I got threats but I just got on with it because I believed in it, so giving up would have been the wrong thing to do. It breaks my heart when people say you’re not passionate about Scotland. Oh my God, really?

“I’m very passionate about Scotland, but it wasn’t a vote about being Scottish. This was a vote for the future of our economy and I just felt that there were so many flaws in the SNP’s 669-page white paper, where they’d worked out that we’d need $113 a barrel to pay for all the services in Scotland, but oil is really volatile.

"At the moment I think it’s trading at $58 a barrel so where was all the money going to come from? I felt that it was far too risky, especially in the economy that we’re in, and I didn’t think it was the right time to do it.

"I did believe Scotland needed more powers and needed to decide more of the local issues and that we should have more power from Westminster, and at the end of the day we did win all that.

"Has all that come to fruition yet? No, but we’ve been told what we’re getting it and when, so don’t you think that we’ve actually gained more than when we started the whole referendum campaign? I think we have.

"But people thought that because I was saying no, that I wasn’t passionate about my country, and that I was turning my back on them. I wasn’t at all. If I didn’t care, don’t you think I would have sat down and said nothing?

“I’m not saying that I don’t want independence one day, I’m just saying we were so unprepared for it at that point. We didn’t even have a currency! How can you run a country without its own currency?”

Michelle Mone's new autobiography

Despite putting down roots in London, and in the near future America, Michelle is adamant that Scotland will always be her home.

She said: “I love being Scottish. I always say first and foremost that I’m Scottish but second to that I’m British as well. I love being both.

"I am Scottish through and through, but I’m proud to be both. But Scotland is where I’m from; it’s where my family lives. I still have homes in Scotland. It will always be part of me, until the day I die.”

Recently the business tycoon famously ‘hung up her bra’ selling an 80% stake in Ultimo so that she might explore pastures new.

BBC favourites Dragons’ Den and The Apprentice are both rumoured to have since approached the blonde bombshell.

She added: “All I can say, which has been publicly said by Dragons’ Den and myself in the past is that I have been offered it quite a few times. I think they are both great shows and who knows what might happen.”

Michelle Mone’s autobiography My Fight to the Top (Blink Publishing) is available now, priced £18.99.